Following the efforts made by the Interbank Card Center (BKM) in Türkiye to simplify payments among individual and self-employed customers, Garanti BBVA has now launched the ‘Request Payment’ feature via its mobile and online banking services.

BBVA Italy has now surpassed 240,000 customers since its launch in October 2021. The bank's strategy, based on a range of fee-free products for customers' day-to-day business (account and card) and financing and savings products at very competitive prices, is yielding results. These figures confirm that the bank is on track to achieve its year-end target of 320,000 customers.

BBVA’s Turkish franchise is strategically reinforcing its commitment to enhance customer accessibility by extending remote banking services to corporate clients.

The bank’s Deputy General Manager Işıl Akdemir Evlioğlu recently spoke with the Turkish edition of Fortune magazine to discuss Garanti BBVA's winning digital banking proposition.

The Banker magazine, owned by the UK-based Financial Times group, has honored BBVA as Spain’s best-performing and fastest-growing bank. In addition, BBVA is Mexico's leading bank by capital adequacy and ranks among the 'Top 5' in Türkiye, Colombia and Peru. To compile its league table of leading banks, The Banker examines 30 indicators using its own in-house method.

BBVA's country manager in Spain, Peio Belausteguigoitia, spoke on Wednesday to underscore the bank's excellent performance in Spain, driven by a strategy of healthy organic growth via customer acquisition and strong progress in almost all line items of the income statement. Speaking at the UIMP summer course hosted by the APIE and BBVA, Mr. Belausteguigoitia stressed that one out of every five customers who open an account for the first time or decide to switch banks chooses BBVA. As a result, the bank ended 2022 with a record intake of new customers, while the figure for the first five months of this year is already close to 500,000.

BBVA, the Comillas Pontifical University and the technology consultancy NTT DATA have unveiled Spain’s first master's degree in fintech, payments and online banking. The master's degree offers comprehensive, specialized, practical and advanced training in financial technologies with the aim of equipping future professionals with the skills to transform and lead the payments and online banking industries.

Garanti BBVA Mobile, Türkiye's most widely used banking application, maintains its leadership among private banks for the services it provides to individual customers and corporate clients.

After just a year and a half of landing in the country with a free, 100% online service, BBVA has positioned itself among the top five financial institutions in the country, according to the annual ranking World’s Best Banks by Forbes and Statista. Specifically, BBVA ranks as the fourth best bank in Italy, ahead of many traditional and native banks in the country. Digital services and customer support were the most highly rated criteria among respondents. BBVA also ranked among the best banks in Spain and Mexico.

BBVA offers parents the opportunity to use the bank's website or smartphone app to open a commission-free account for their kids as soon as they are born.

BBVA acquired more than one million customers in 2022 in Spain, of which just over half -521,802- were through digital channels (web or mobile). This figure represented an increase in BBVA's digital customer acquisition of 13.21 percent compared to 2021, with mobile, with 71.5 percent of total digital acquisition, being the most used channel. For 2023, the bank will continue to promote its digital recruitment strategy through different campaigns focused on rewarding customer loyalty, such as the 'Invite a Friend Plan', among others. For this year, the entity has set itself the goal of revalidating the figures of 2022 and acquiring another half a million digital customers in Spain.

BBVA's CEO, Onur Genç, said Monday that he is very satisfied with the performance of the digital bank's business and customer acquisition in Italy, one year after its launch. “We expect to end the year with 160,000 customers, almost triple the initial forecasts,” he said during his presentation at the XIII Encuentro Financiero Expansión KPMG.

BBVA has explored the potential of blockchain technology as a major catalyst to create value in finance 2.0 for the past six years and is confident of its ability to build a more advanced society in economic and social terms. Alfonso Gómez, CEO of BBVA Switzerland,  spoke recently at the Fifth Blockchain and Digital Asset Forum hosted by online publication El Confidencial and sponsored by Grant Thornton, Allfunds, Criptan and Metrovacesa. Alfonso explained the key points of digital assets, discussed the role and responsibilities of traditional banks in this new space, and pointed out the opportunities that are now emerging.

You can watch the event delayed here.

BBVA New Gen, the investment product offered by the Group’s Swiss franchise, has completed its first year of existence. In a move to streamline the onboarding process, the bank now lets prospective customers sign up online just by uploading a ‘selfie’, after which their identity is verified in a matter of seconds. BBVA Switzerland is leveraging this technology, which can verify identity documents and passports from more than 190 countries, to boost its international expansion.

The southern Swiss city of Lugano has stepped up cryptocurrency use and is developing new infrastructure to adopt Bitcoin, Tether and its own LVGA token as legal tender. In the coming months, Lugano residents will be able to use cryptocurrencies to pay their taxes and make purchases at more than 200 local businesses.

World Finance, one of the world's leading business and finance magazines, named Garanti BBVA ‘Türkiye's Best Retail Bank’ for the eighth consecutive time. The Turkish franchise was also singled out as ‘Europe's Best Retail Bank’ for the fifth time.

BBVA is the winner in four categories of the 2022 Euromoney Awards for Excellence. The bank is 'Western Europe’s Best Digital Bank,’ 'Latin America’s Best Bank for Corporate Responsibility,’ 'Mexico’s Best Bank' and 'Mexico’s Best Investment Bank.'

Joy Macknight, editor of The Banker, spoke with Alfonso Gómez, the CEO of BBVA Switzerland, to discuss the details of the bank’s cryptocurrency trading and custody service. BBVA Switzerland is the first traditional bank in Europe, and one of the first in the world to offer a service of this kind.

BBVA has launched a new card in Spain as part of its Aqua range - characterized by offering a dynamic CVV for each purchase and no printed number - that combines maximum security with the possibility of paying in installments for up to three months, with no interest or deferral fees. As a result, BBVA is breaking into the new ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ (BNPL) payment method with a product that helps its customers to make their payments in a convenient and flexible way.

Victoria del Castillo Marchese has been the Head of Strategy and M&A at BBVA since December 2018. Prior to this, she held a variety of different roles at the bank, where she began working in 2001. She was recently interviewed by the media outlet Capital & Corporate, where she recalled that “one of BBVA’s priorities is profitable growth” in places where the bank has a presence, such as Spain, Mexico, Turkey and South America. She also emphasized the value of the digital means of expanding the bank’s activity in other countries: “Digitization allows us to enter new markets,” she said.

BBVA’s Turkish unit consolidates its lead in innovative digital payment solutions by adding a new dimension to card transactions with digital receipts, a first in the Turkish banking sector.

BBVA has set a huge digital challenge for itself: to go one step further in the banking services it provides and offer personalized suggestions that improve its customers’  financial health. To do so, it uses data science to identify the characteristics that define them (always with their prior consent) and therefore offer suggestions on how to manage their everyday finances, lower their debt, save or plan for the future.

Atom, the UK's first app-based bank, has raised more than £75m in new equity (around €90m)¹. Together with Toscafund and Infinity Investment Partners, BBVA has led this round, which is still open to other shareholders of the company. BBVA has once again shown its support for the Atom project and team, of which it has been a shareholder since 2015 and which it has supported in all its share capital increases. BBVA is currently the main shareholder, with a 39% holding.

BBVA has reached an agreement to invest $300 million (about €263 million¹) in Neon, a Brazilian digital bank founded in 2016 that aims to improve access to financial services for individuals, self-employed and small businesses in its country. Neon has 15 million registered accounts. The investment takes place in a context of unprecedented technological disruption, with solid growth of digital and innovative models, particularly in financial services. In addition to a clear commitment to innovation, this investment allows BBVA to gain exposure to retail banking in Brazil, a market with one of the highest potential in the world.

Adaptation to the environment is the main vector of operation and survival for a business. The technological environment plays a crucial role in this process. As a result, cybersecurity becomes a fundamental pillar and employees are key players. Not in vain, 62% of incidents of this nature that take place in organizations happen due to human error, as reflected in the latest ‘Cyberthreats and Trends’ report prepared by the National Cryptologic Center.

Digitization in the banking sector is increasingly taking on different dimensions. Virtual assistants and chatbots have come to life with the support of artificial intelligence technologies. BBVA’s Turkish unit was a pioneer in the country with the launching of Ugi in 2016 and Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger bots a few years later.

BBVA continues to emphasize its digital transformation as an essential factor in achieving its ambitious goals, presented at Investor Day. In this interview, Global Head of Client Solutions David Puente highlights how being a pioneer in digitization gives BBVA an advantage to continue growing in areas such as payments and insurance, create alliances through ‘open banking’ and, in particular, to take a new strategic leap: evolve from providing services to proactive recommendations to help customers improve their financial health and transition to a decarbonized economy.

The BBVA Group is debuting fully digital retail banking in Italy, with a unique value proposition and customer experience. BBVA is entering the Italian market with free digital banking; one of the most secure cards in the world - as there are no printed numbers on the card, and a dynamic CVV - unmatched in Italy; and financing products at competitive prices.

BBVA has been an overall digital experience leader for five years in a row according to ‘The Forrester Digital Experience Review™: European Mobile Banking Apps, Q3 2021’. The report identifies leaders in mobile banking functionality and user experience (UX) and shares best practices that digital and customer experience (CX) professionals can learn from. BBVA is the only Spanish bank that is an overall leader in the mobile digital banking experience.

In line with BBVA’s commitment to SMEs and aware of entrepreneurs’ new needs, BBVA in Peru has launched the profile ‘Mi Negocio’ (My Business) on its app so that individuals with a business can manage their personal finances as well as finances for their businesses on the same platform.